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By Casey Castle
The Winchester Sun
After some discussion Tuesday, the Clark County Board of Education chose not to add a regular work session or agenda planning meeting to its yearly meeting schedule.
The board discussed the possibility of meeting twice a month with the first meeting of the month operating as a work session. Board Chairman Dr. Michael Kuduk suggested the change during the panel’s organizational meeting last week.
“Our meetings tend to run pretty long. This is an attempt to streamline things,” he said.
But Kuduk said he was also open to whatever the board decided, saying whatever the board thought worked best would be fine.
School Superintendent Dr. Elaine Farris was similarly amenable.
“Whatever you decide, we’ll make it work,” she said.
She did point out a number of potential hurdles, though, including the difficulty of getting some information prepared two weeks earlier. Board member Dr.¿Beth¿Griffith said she liked the idea of the extra meetings, but echoed Farris statements.
“It takes a lot of time to get all the things that go into the agenda,” she said.
Farris suggested a keeping the philosophy behind the work session meetings but not making them a regular part of the schedule.
“You can call a work session,” she said. “It would be a special meeting, but you as the chair can check with another board member and myself — or I could say to you, ‘You probably need to have some additional discussion on this.’ You can have that opportunity as well as long as you advertise 24 hours in advance, you can have special-called meetings.”
Farris reminded the board that the agendas for special-called meetings can not be altered but could be used to serve the same purpose as an extra regular meeting.
McGowan was also for using special-called meetings.
“Not every night we’re going to stay here four hours,” he said. “Some nights we’ll have to stay longer. If we know in advance we’re going to have to stay longer, then we can use a special session to talk about that and not have to stay.”
Kuduk agreed.
“We could do these on an as-needed basis — see what’s on the agenda and do a special-called session,” he said.
The decision proved to be fortuitous as Farris informed the board just before it adjourned that she will be retiring after the school year. More meetings will likely be required to complete the hiring process for a new superintendent.
“This is going to be a lot of work in terms of the superintendent selection,” Kuduk said.
The board also tabled a decision on the naming of the two new schools. The school naming committee headed by Barbara Disney offered three names for each of the schools after selecting them from a number of suggestions collected from the community. All of the names were presented to the board, but the committee suggested Daniel Boone Elementary School, Homer C. Ledford Elementary School, Veteran’s Memorial Elementary School, Clark County Middle School, Daniel Boone Middle School and Homer C. Ledford Middle School.
The board opted to wait to name the schools after getting more input from the community and which of the three options the community preferred for the two schools.
Disney said she was not immediately sure how the committee planned to survey the community about its preference on a name.
In other business, the board:
— Approved a measure marking used and non-working cell phones as surplus.
— Approved a number of pay requests and change orders pertaining to construction projects.
Contact Casey Castle at ccastle@winchestersun.com.